This paper deals with the inferrability of classes of E-pattern languages—also referred
to as extended or erasing pattern languages—from positive data in Gold’s
model of identification in the limit. The first main part of the paper shows that
the recently presented negative result on terminal-free E-pattern languages over binary
alphabets does not hold for other alphabet sizes, so that the full class of these
languages is inferrable from positive data if and only if the corresponding terminal
alphabet does not consist of exactly two distinct letters. The second main part yields
the insight that the positive result on terminal-free E-pattern languages over alphabets
with three or four letters cannot be extended to the class of general E-pattern
languages. With regard to larger alphabets, the extensibility remains open.
The proof methods developed for these main results do not directly discuss the
(non-)existence of appropriate learning strategies, but they deal with structural
properties of classes of E-pattern languages, and, in particular, with the problem
of finding telltales for these languages. It is shown that the inferrability of classes
of E-pattern languages is closely connected to some problems on the ambiguity
of morphisms so that the technical contributions of the paper largely consist of
combinatorial insights into morphisms in word monoids.